Board Characteristics and Its Impact on Firm Free Cash Flows

This research tries to achieve to provide sufficient view about free cash flow and internal governance in corporate governance (CG) by addressing the relationship between board and audit characteristics with free cash flow. Specifically, this research tries to explore if internal governance practices are substitutes to control agency problem within the Malaysian firms. This book employs panel regression analysis. The panel data set comprise of 50 Malaysian companies (200 observations) which has be done for four consecutive years which comprise of 2005 to 2008. According to samples which has been taken from 2005 to 2008; the results show no significant relationship between board characteristics except board size and free cash flow. Instead, it shows a significant relationship between all audit committee variables except financial expertise and free cash flow. The finding of this book provides that the structure of audit committee is an important element in firm's decisions which consist of deciding on keeping or spending free cash flow in different ways that can be of interests to both managers and shareholders in Malaysian firms.